Felon: Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts (2019)
Felon: Poems by Reginald Dwayne Betts (2019)
CITY OF THE MOON
for JB
There walks a man, somewhere,
Wanting the touch of another
Man & somewhere people know
That desire; name the walking man after
You-Jericho, because G-d once
Promised to bring a city to its knees
For the man circling you with
His trumpet. Going down from
Jerusalem a man broke another
Man, they say, those men lost in
Gospel & what G-d can’t fathom:
Odalisque & outstretched arm. They
Don’t know every love is a kind
Of robbery. And sometimes hurt
Is a kind of mending. A body only
Broken by death. Every moan ain’t
A cry. This is always about vulnerability.
How others afraid to touch a man
Who touches a man have need to
Imagine hips & the flesh they flank
As a confession: the body threatens.
Call that fear suffering. The heathen
Is always afraid of a warm body
Against his own. & while some say
Things always return to a man
& his desire to be touched, & touch,
That want to be known, governs us all.
DIESEL THERAPY
His mother told him. Airport bars always pour something nice. Distance makes bartenders understand suffering. That Thursday he was headed fourteen cities away from anyone he knew & the brown was fortification. His daddy built houses. Those that grown men create in their mind & lock themselves inside. The doctors called it bipolar but his moms just said his pops had some shit with him. Turned his head into an airport. He was always running away from something, always fourteen cities away from the people that loved him, even if they were in the house with him. Everything reminded his father of the feds. He’ll say his father taught him to crave brown liquor. Lighter fluid for the brain he would say, as if he, the father, thought it would drown out the noise. Half a dozen years out of prison & every time he walks into an airport he thinks about his father. When he stares down a nice long taste of whisky, he almost wishes there were voices in his head he wanted to drown out-wishes the distance he traveled was something with him, & not the way he stole away from things he couldn’t handle.
MURAL FOR THE HEART
Tonight is not for my woman, who would touch me
before we speak; not when the accumulation
of our yesterdays hang like the last dusk before us-
each memory another haunting thing. Not when buried
somewhere behind us is all that the past, that we,
will not let die, history our prophecy & albatross, the myth
we measure the marrow. Every story worth telling
has a thousand beginnings. Let me tell you this one:
There was this one night on a road trip. She, my wife, was not
there. Already rehearsing my absence, practicing the dance
of raising boys alone. Distance our disaster. & so, if I say
the trouble began when the car stalled, I would be lying. But
the car did stall, every light inside flashed as if
the emergency was something breaking inside of she & I,
& not just an empty tank. Everyone wants a chance
to be a hero, & so, when I climbed out the truck’s front seat,
already I had measured the distance from the truck to the station.
A thousand feet. I once lifted my woman & carried her
on my back from where we stood to the bed that I would turn
into what remains when lies become shrapnel. Have you seen
a man push his body against a thing as if love alone
would move it? That night there were three of us riding. My
woman was not there. Two of us climbed out, rolled up sleeves,
began pushing. Muscles strained against the darkness, the heft
of the truck lurching, at best. When the scrawny kid joined,
his body lost inside his coat, we thought ourselves blessed.
A tampon run, he said, explaining why he was there, on this
street so late at night, his girlfriend on the side of the road
& my woman five hundred miles away, as if to say
part of love is pretending to be a hero for strangers. The truck
barely moved, the way love barely moves, when weighed
down by memories. Before long there were four of us pushing,
the thousand feet still a thousand feet. & then
we stopped, which is to say we realized: the thing you want
can break you. We all knew that in time our legs would shake,
that our bodies would betray us & admit that the heart,
though not useless, lacks the thing needed for some miracles.
& yet, against this truth, I keep praying my woman,
who is no more mine than any woman can belong to a man,
but is her own, constellation of music & desire, as is anyone,
will forgive history, knowing a thousand angels stand beside,
exhausted, too, though certain the heft of their wings will bring
a gale fierce enough to lift this hurt that we refuse to name.
CITY OF THE MOON
for JB
There walks a man, somewhere,
Wanting the touch of another
Man & somewhere people know
That desire; name the walking man after
You-Jericho, because G-d once
Promised to bring a city to its knees
For the man circling you with
His trumpet. Going down from
Jerusalem a man broke another
Man, they say, those men lost in
Gospel & what G-d can’t fathom:
Odalisque & outstretched arm. They
Don’t know every love is a kind
Of robbery. And sometimes hurt
Is a kind of mending. A body only
Broken by death. Every moan ain’t
A cry. This is always about vulnerability.
How others afraid to touch a man
Who touches a man have need to
Imagine hips & the flesh they flank
As a confession: the body threatens.
Call that fear suffering. The heathen
Is always afraid of a warm body
Against his own. & while some say
Things always return to a man
& his desire to be touched, & touch,
That want to be known, governs us all.
DIESEL THERAPY
His mother told him. Airport bars always pour something nice. Distance makes bartenders understand suffering. That Thursday he was headed fourteen cities away from anyone he knew & the brown was fortification. His daddy built houses. Those that grown men create in their mind & lock themselves inside. The doctors called it bipolar but his moms just said his pops had some shit with him. Turned his head into an airport. He was always running away from something, always fourteen cities away from the people that loved him, even if they were in the house with him. Everything reminded his father of the feds. He’ll say his father taught him to crave brown liquor. Lighter fluid for the brain he would say, as if he, the father, thought it would drown out the noise. Half a dozen years out of prison & every time he walks into an airport he thinks about his father. When he stares down a nice long taste of whisky, he almost wishes there were voices in his head he wanted to drown out-wishes the distance he traveled was something with him, & not the way he stole away from things he couldn’t handle.
MURAL FOR THE HEART
Tonight is not for my woman, who would touch me
before we speak; not when the accumulation
of our yesterdays hang like the last dusk before us-
each memory another haunting thing. Not when buried
somewhere behind us is all that the past, that we,
will not let die, history our prophecy & albatross, the myth
we measure the marrow. Every story worth telling
has a thousand beginnings. Let me tell you this one:
There was this one night on a road trip. She, my wife, was not
there. Already rehearsing my absence, practicing the dance
of raising boys alone. Distance our disaster. & so, if I say
the trouble began when the car stalled, I would be lying. But
the car did stall, every light inside flashed as if
the emergency was something breaking inside of she & I,
& not just an empty tank. Everyone wants a chance
to be a hero, & so, when I climbed out the truck’s front seat,
already I had measured the distance from the truck to the station.
A thousand feet. I once lifted my woman & carried her
on my back from where we stood to the bed that I would turn
into what remains when lies become shrapnel. Have you seen
a man push his body against a thing as if love alone
would move it? That night there were three of us riding. My
woman was not there. Two of us climbed out, rolled up sleeves,
began pushing. Muscles strained against the darkness, the heft
of the truck lurching, at best. When the scrawny kid joined,
his body lost inside his coat, we thought ourselves blessed.
A tampon run, he said, explaining why he was there, on this
street so late at night, his girlfriend on the side of the road
& my woman five hundred miles away, as if to say
part of love is pretending to be a hero for strangers. The truck
barely moved, the way love barely moves, when weighed
down by memories. Before long there were four of us pushing,
the thousand feet still a thousand feet. & then
we stopped, which is to say we realized: the thing you want
can break you. We all knew that in time our legs would shake,
that our bodies would betray us & admit that the heart,
though not useless, lacks the thing needed for some miracles.
& yet, against this truth, I keep praying my woman,
who is no more mine than any woman can belong to a man,
but is her own, constellation of music & desire, as is anyone,
will forgive history, knowing a thousand angels stand beside,
exhausted, too, though certain the heft of their wings will bring
a gale fierce enough to lift this hurt that we refuse to name.